On Questioning the Jewish State
Joseph Levine
I was raised in a religious Jewish environment, and though we were not
strongly Zionist, I always took it to be self-evident that “Israel has a
right to exist.” Now anyone who has debated the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict will have encountered this phrase often. Defenders of Israeli
policies routinely accuse Israel’s critics of denying her right to
exist, while the critics (outside of a small group on the left, where I
now find myself) bend over backward to insist that, despite their
criticisms, of course they affirm it. The general mainstream consensus
seems to be that to deny Israel’s right to exist is a clear indication
of anti-Semitism (a charge Jews like myself are not immune to), and
therefore not an option for people of conscience.
Over the years I came to question this consensus and to see that the
general fealty to it has seriously constrained open debate on the issue,
one of vital importance not just to the people directly involved —
Israelis and Palestinians — but to the conduct of our own foreign policy
and, more important, to the safety of the world at large. My view is
that one really ought to question Israel’s right to exist and
that doing so does not manifest anti-Semitism. The first step in
questioning the principle, however, is to figure out what it means.
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"But the harm doesn’t stop with the inherently undemocratic character of the state. For if an ethnic national state is established in a territory that contains a significant number of non-members of that ethnic group, it will inevitably face resistance from the land’s other inhabitants. This will force the ethnic nation controlling the state to resort to further undemocratic means to maintain their hegemony. Three strategies to deal with resistance are common: expulsion, occupation and institutional marginalization.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly, all three strategies have been employed by the Zionist movement: expulsion in 1948 (and, to a lesser extent, in 1967), occupation of the territories conquered in 1967 and institution of a complex web of laws that prevent Israel’s Palestinian citizens from mounting an internal challenge to the Jewish character of the state. (The recent outrage in Israel over a proposed exclusion of ultra-Orthodox parties from the governing coalition, for example, failed to note that no Arab political party has ever been invited to join the government.) In other words, the wrong of ethnic hegemony within the state leads to the further wrong of repression against the Other within its midst.
There is an unavoidable conflict between being a Jewish state and a democratic state. I want to emphasize that there’s nothing anti-Semitic in pointing this out, and it’s time the question was discussed openly on its merits, without the charge of anti-Semitism hovering in the background."